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We've got Pokemon that roam about at random, have super-confusing locations to navigate, recovery moves that draw out the battle or lots of unusual requirements like trading other pokemon or deciphering codes. Some pokemon simply just appear at very high levels that make them challenging.

This might not fit the requirements exactly because the hard part isn't actually catching them, but unlocking them. The regis in Ruby & Sapphire were the hardest legendaries to get a hold of. Back then, at least for kids my age, the internet wasn't so easy to navigate. This made all the little requirements EXTREMELY difficult to figure out on your own. I actually can't even remember if I was able to figure it out on my own or if i ended up asking my older brother for help. Funny enough, the roaming legendaries from G/S/C weren't that hard for me since they usually just showed up while i was walking from point a to point b. Guess I was just lucky there.

i suppose i will participate in this discussion. In my honest opinion roaming legendaries are fine as Trapping trivializes the searching over and over part but ironically i would have to say FRLG roaming pokemon specifically Entei and raikou. personally in my life time i have never encountered them. if someone does the Roar bug will ruin it as it causes the beasts to disappear from the save file forcing the player to not use the shadow tag/Arena trap trick to catch them.

I love roamers to death, but I have to objectively put the FRLG roamers as both hardest and worst to catch in any game ever for one simple reason: the PokéDex resets to Bulbasaur's position every time you check it and even I don't have the patience for that.

This answer might surprise a lot of people but I found the legendary birds in XY the most infuriating roamers. They technically become stationary eventually I know, but I thought they were worse to catch than the legendary beasts or the Lati twins, Mesprit or other roamers because in the previous cases at least the legendaries become fair game as soon as you see them. You can throw your master ball or try to trap them with mean look or shadow tag. But with these legendaries you encounter them in the wild but can't do trubbish about it. They run away automatically and you are not even prompted to catch them.

This is not like a one time thing. You have to run into them over and over again like a dozen times. Wtf? Why?

This is not say like Suicune in the Johto games where she interacts with your trainer sprite and runs away a couple of times at a set location as part of the story. Your encounter with the legendary bird is completely random.

I have never caught one of the birds in XY. Its just way too much time investment. I'm willing to ride up and down the route to trigger 1 encounter, but not 10. I just don't really see the point of this. Its so tedious, and unlike with Eusine's character in Crystal/ HGSS there isn't much explanation for why this is happening.

Q: What is worse than looking for a roaming legendary?

A: Having it flee from you.

Q: What is worse than having it flee from you?

A: Having it flee from you 9 different times.

Q: What is worse than having a roaming legendary flee from you 9 times?

A: Having it flee when you had a friggin master ball right there in your bag each time.

You don't know when your going to encounter this Pokemon again, it can change routes. You have to have this same fruitless encounter over and over again, with no real explanation. No, it just wasn't even worth it. I have caught roamers before but not these.

I was at the end of Pokemon Y and had done everything beat the E4, conquered the battle chateau, Maison and institute, looker's side quest, caught all the other legendaries, and still had seen Moltres only twice. No, just no...

This answer might surprise a lot of people but I found the legendary birds in XY the most infuriating roamers. They technically become stationary eventually I know, but I thought they were worse to catch than the legendary beasts or the Lati twins, Mesprit or other roamers because in the previous cases at least the legendaries become fair game as soon as you see them. You can throw your master ball or try to trap them with mean look or shadow tag. But with these legendaries you encounter them in the wild but can't do trubbish about it. They run away automatically and you are not even prompted to catch them.

This is not like a one time thing. You have to run into them over and over again like a dozen times. Wtf? Why?

This is not say like Suicune in the Johto games where she interacts with your trainer sprite and runs away a couple of times at a set location as part of the story. Your encounter with the legendary bird is completely random.

I have never caught one of the birds in XY. Its just way too much time investment. I'm willing to ride up and down the route to trigger 1 encounter, but not 10. I just don't really see the point of this. Its so tedious, and unlike with Eusine's character in Crystal/ HGSS there isn't much explanation for why this is happening.

Q: What is worse than looking for a roaming legendary?

A: Having it flee from you.

Q: What is worse than having it flee from you?

A: Having it flee from you 9 different times.

Q: What is worse than having a roaming legendary flee from you 9 times?

A: Having it flee when you had a friggin master ball right there in your bag each time.

You don't know when your going to encounter this Pokemon again, it can change routes. You have to have this same fruitless encounter over and over again, with no real explanation. No, it just wasn't even worth it. I have caught roamers before but not these.

I was at the end of Pokemon Y and had done everything beat the E4, conquered the battle chateau, Maison and institute, looker's side quest, caught all the other legendaries, and still had seen Moltres only twice. No, just no...

Obviously so elusive, I didn't even know they were in the game at all. :/

For me, the most hardest Legendary to catch is the Legendary Dogs. First of all, they are roaming here and there in the entire johto region. Thats why, we have to go random places to search them, which is really annoying. Moreover, even if you find them they will escape and again you need to search them.

I'd consider any roaming legendary Pokémon to be the hardest, simply because of how hard it is to track them down. The legendary beasts were especially hard since they run away as soon as they can, meaning that even if you find one, it will be gone after a single turn unless you have a way to trap them.

Roamers are pretty hard, I'd agree. You either have to encounter it a lot of times, meaning spending hours looking for it, or you have to be prepared with a fast Mean Look pokemon like Crobat, which can take a while to prepare.

For a non roamer, I think Lugia is pretty hard. In most games, it doesn't have much pp to begin with: usually having Aeroblast and Hydro Pump as 2 of its moves, both of which have 5 pp. So it has a higher chance of struggling before capture compared to other legendaries. Pretty annoying.

The major problem with most legendary pokemon is capturing them is god-darned RNG-heavy capture mechanics. Their low capture rate exacerbates this issue to ridiculous proportions because, in most cases, you have a very low chance (I estimate... maybe 5% at most) of capturing them per throw under optimal conditions. There is no challenge to this; it's just repeatedly throwing pokeballs at the pokemon until you capture them and praying that it doesn't go so long as to cause them to struggle.

Roaming legends, with their ability to run away, are ten times worse. It's a huge pain capturing them to begin with; much less having to chase after them and then getting only 1 turn to capture them before they run when you do catch up with them. There are ways to trivialize them, but they require bringing specific pokemon which may or may not be at a disadvantage against them.

Yeah gotta agree all the romaing legendarys are surely the toughest to catch. Just for the sake of conversation though, I always thought the legendary birds in FRLG were always tough to catch, don't know if it was just my bad luck, but Moltres and co always took me AGES to catch.

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